New Child's Play Books!

I love seeing Child's Play's big brown box of books show up on my porch every few months. The kids and I get to test drive new titles and see what we think. Child's Play is an independent publisher, specializing in whole child development, learning through play, life skills, and values. Their stuff is so pretty and fun. The latest additions to their collections got a thumbs up from us! Check it out.


The What's That board book series encourages guessing, prediction, and memory skills. Four titles in the series include CHOO! CHOO!, SNAP! SNAP!, TAP! TAP!, and TOOT! TOOT!. What's that noise? Lift the flap and find out! Lift the flap books are my go-to's with little ones. Always a hit! Familiar themes and vibrant illustrations will mean many, repeated, and fun-filled readings.

The Seasons board book series has a separate charm all its own (Titles include Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter). Each season has something special about it, and in these books you get to explore each one. You will follow these whimsically illustrated  children as they spend time discovering the joys of indoor and outdoor play. And the durability of these board books means you can tote them around with you in each season and read them indoors or out!

We also read a couple new Child's Play picture books and they were adorable! Crunch! by Carolyn Rabei features the cutest little guinea pig named Crunch. He loves to eat and is shocked when a mouse named Cheddar asks to share his food. Trade for a hug? Nope. But Crunch ends up regretting his decision and sets out to find the hungry little mouse.

The last book was Ailsa Burrow's The Jar of Happiness. In this sweet book, Meg shares her "jar of happiness" with friends when they are down and need a little lift. Then one day the jar goes missing. Can she ever be happy again? But Meg's friends help her find new ways to be happy. We loved the super-cute cat in this story; he made us smile and giggle!

All books that are definitely worth your time and great additions to your library!

Reading with a Theme!

Have the winter blah's got you down? Are they making your kids or students a little nutty? I discovered that digging into a theme in reading, while you're stuck digging out of snow and cold can be a great thing to keep everybody from driving each other crazy!

I tend to get a little irritated when I see some teachers coming up with a theme they want to use in their classroom, and then haphazardly throwing any picture books into their theme that seem to correlate - just for the sake of maintaing the theme. I have seen many sub-par books gets a lot of focus and attention simply because they worked with a teacher's theme. Sometimes great books are overlooked because it's not initially obvious that they might work with a particular theme.

How about first finding some great books, seeing if some of them relate to one another, and then creating your own theme that is structured around your reading instead of vise-versa? I know this method is not always possible, but worth a shot from time to time, right? I have found Pinterest especially helpful in this department. I can pin books I like, make helpful notes about each, and organize them by a theme or topic. Then I can easy find and utilize a great book at the right time!

I saw that I had some pet-themed books piling up that I really liked and wanted to read to my students. So I decided that's what we would be reading about at Literacy Launchpad in February! Not surprisingly, the students really enjoyed these stories. I mean really. Sometimes I couldn't get them to move onto an activity because they kept wanting me to read and re-read these books. A great problem to have!

A theme isn't only useful in the classroom though. I have used themes at home with my son, and often I will let his own natural interests guide the theme. Other times I will introduce a theme and watch his interest grow and grow on that topic as we read more and more books on it. I don't do structured units or lessons at home with these books. I simply scatter them about in our reading spots and pick them up to read when we have a moment or two.

You can see the pet books we've been reading at Literacy Launchpad in the sidebar. And here are some photos from the fun we had comparing, learning new information, and playing with these pet-themed titles!

A Wintery Print Awareness Unit

January turned out to be one of those fabulous teaching months where all my lesson plans went even better than I could have imagined when I planned them! The kids had an awesome month of learning and loving books! We focused on print awareness as we read tales that took us to winter wonderlands. (Hey, at least we got to experience winter weather somehow, right?).

We one we read All You Need for a Snowman by Alice Schertle There are so many wonderful snowmen books out there, but this on remains a favorite of mine... and my students! They always love the interactive quality of it - insisting on the additional elements you need to complete a snowman. It's a great discussion starter with the group and keeps them fully engaged.



 We talked about different forms of print we use and see: newspapers, letters, grocery lists, etc. We also talked about words in the books we read and how they never change. We did crayon-resist watercolor painting with this lesson, and had to discover what pictures and words were hidden on our paper. The kids thought this was absolutely magical!

Week two we read The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats. I love sharing this classic, especially since many of my students usually haven't read it yet. This year I checked out a bunch of copies from the library (yay for there always being lots of copies of Caldecott books) and each student was able to follow along with me as I read it aloud. As I read the story, I had the students hunt for certain words and/or letters within the text - like a little scavenger hunt. They loved this, and did so great with it!




 Then we played in the snow! Woohoo! Faux snow is always a hit! We had to get all suited up first and put on all the same kind of snow gear that Peter wore. We tried to do the things Peter did in the snow (but on a smaller scale - we used our fingers). And then we just were silly and played. I could barely tear the kids away from the snow when it was time to leave class. What a special lesson that always is!

The last week we read The Snow Globe Family by Jan O'Connor. This was a new one for our winter-reading repertoire, but was a big hit! It was probably everyone's favorite for January. The kids just really enjoyed the wonder of imagining the people inside a snow globe being real and having their own little life. They loved the part where the baby shakes the snow globe and sends the snow globe family flying, along with all their furniture!





Somehow I managed not to get any photos of this week's lesson. But we used our imaginations to create our own little snow globe world. We used paper plates as our globes and drew on them with crayons. Then we added cotton balls (stretched and torn) to make snow in them. We used construction paper as the stand for the snow globe and put our names in glitter at the bottom. You can't do a print awareness unit without having some print fun with the students' names! I let the kids do the glitter process, and they thought it was the coolest when they finally shook the excess glitter off and there was their name - all SPARKLY! They were positively beaming!

A fantastic unit... and now I have to try to stay on par this month. I've got my work cut out for me!


What's your favorite wintery book to read with your students or kiddos at home?

Meaningful Literacy Experiences - Winter Style!

Jan Brett's The Hat

This horse is wishing for a "hat" like Hedgie's.

He can find one on the clothesline!

Hedgie laughs and says, "Don't they know that animals should never wear clothes?"

Denise Fleming's The First Day of Winter

Predicting (our focus during the month of January) what snowman accessories are hidden under the sheet.

... Then dressing up like silly snowmen!

Other Fun

Writing a letter for The Jolly Christmas Postman (Allen and Janet Ahlberg) to deliver!

Enjoying some good books by the fire during the month of December.

I can read with my rebus reader!

Digging for the alphabet!

New School! New Fun!

One of my lovely students recently moved to a new school, and her sweet mother was such a fan of Literacy Launchpad that she wanted Literacy Launchpad to tag along with them on their move. I felt so honored by this high compliment and was grateful for the opportunity to spread the reading love to more children.

I'm not sure I've ever felt so welcomed at a new school! I feel it's a strong testament to a school that so values the education of their students that they make an enthusiastic effort to bring in a program like Literacy Launchpad. Most schools are not as easy to work with as this wonderful new home Literacy Launchpad finds itself in. I am having such a good time there already. Check it out!

We've been reading wintery tales this month. Here are a couple photos from our The Hat (Jan Brett) lesson. We decorated "woolens" to hang on our own clothesline. Then we made some silly animal puppets to use to retell the story. Everybody's animal got a turn to snatch a woolen from the clothesline and wear it as a hat!

We also read The First Day of Winter (Denise Fleming), and as we talked about predicting, we played a fun game to give us some practice. The students took turns feeling hidden snowman adornments and made predictions of what they thought each item might be. It was hard not to peek, but they did great! And we took turns trying on the various items. It was hysterical. The kids could have played this all day!







We also read Owl Moon (Jane Yolen), and had a very fun time going "owling" in class. The kids kept wanting to "do it again!" But my photos from that lesson aren't handy at the moment.